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The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has questioned Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed’s continued political association with Peter Obi, challenging the former Labour Party presidential candidate’s suitability for the presidency after their joint campaign in the 2023 election.
Sowore also accused Obi and Baba-Ahmed of maintaining links with Nigeria’s political and military establishment, alleging that their relationships with former military leaders influenced their political positions.
The AAC candidate made the remarks during an interview on ARISE NEWS on Tuesday while reacting to recent comments surrounding Obi’s political record and his 2023 presidential campaign.
Sowore alleged that both Obi and Baba-Ahmed had strong connections to former military administrations.
“These guys are military apologists. It is not only Datti Baba-Ahmed that is a military apologist; Peter Obi himself is a military apologist. They are all Abacha’s boys; Datti was a Babangida person, Peter Obi is an Abacha boy, and they all worked with the military,” he alleged.
He further claimed that the two politicians maintained relationships with members of Nigeria’s political establishment despite their public opposition to President Bola Tinubu.
Sowore recalled an encounter involving Baba-Ahmed and Tinubu during a peace agreement signing event in 2023, saying the conduct of some opposition politicians at the event appeared inconsistent with their public rhetoric.
“I met Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed for the first time during a peace agreement signing event in 2023. I was sitting next to him while he was occupying the seat meant for Peter Obi. Next to me was Tinubu, who is now president,” Sowore said.
According to him, Baba-Ahmed addressed Tinubu as “Uncle” and showed what Sowore described as an unusually deferential attitude towards the then-presidential candidate.
He said the encounter made him question whether the public disagreements between some opposition figures and Tinubu reflected their private relationships.
“I said to myself, these guys are presenting a double-faced, Janus-faced persona to the public,” Sowore said.
He recalled that Obi later arrived at the event and, after the programme, several politicians who had publicly criticised Tinubu queued to greet him.
Sowore said he deliberately left without greeting Tinubu, adding that he later saw Obi and other political figures waiting to shake hands with him.
“I looked back five seconds later, and all of the guys we held meetings with who were busy in public were lined up—Peter Obi, Dan Nwanyanwu, all of them were lining up to greet him,” he said.
Sowore said the experience prompted him to question the consistency of the politicians’ public positions, particularly their criticism of Tinubu during the 2023 campaign.
He also challenged Baba-Ahmed over his role as Obi’s running mate in 2023, arguing that recent assessments of Obi’s presidential suitability raised questions about the basis on which the ticket was presented to voters.
“That was why I confronted them. I’m saying to you: if you knew that your candidate, Peter Obi, was not competent to be president in 2023, why did you have to drag Nigeria through that whole process of presenting such a candidate when you knew it and are now saying it?” he asked.
Sowore also dismissed the argument that Obi’s strong support among young Nigerians in 2023 was sufficient evidence of his suitability for the presidency.
He argued that popularity should not be confused with competence and said the circumstances that produced Obi’s massive youth following deserved closer examination.
“This whole idea that he was popular and youth followed him, it’s all part of the campaigning that brought us here today,” Sowore said.
He alleged that Obi had been presented to Nigerians through a carefully constructed political image which, in his view, persuaded many voters to support him.
“You can package a candidate and then discover that everything you did in packaging made people fall for what was false and fraudulent,” he said.
Sowore said the current debate was therefore not simply about how popular Obi became during the 2023 election, but about the political strategy and messaging that contributed to that popularity.
“I don’t think we’re discussing why he was popular; we’re discussing how he became popular and on which grounds he became popular,” he said.
He maintained that the controversy surrounding Baba-Ahmed’s recent comments about Obi should prompt Nigerians to examine the 2023 campaign more critically.
“That was my position then: that all these things were packaged to fool the public and fool some youths,” Sowore added.
